


The hills in this city: Songs for Touring San Francisco with Mr. Darcy

by johannaisaviking



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, Pemberley arc, San Francisco, Touring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 05:19:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johannaisaviking/pseuds/johannaisaviking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In honor of yesterday’s tour: fourteen songs and thirteen scenes chronicling Lizzie and Darcy’s day out on the town. And Gigi is there, too. Includes: sea lions, tweets, finger traps, and discussion of critical theory as it applies to Vietnamese cuisine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The hills in this city: Songs for Touring San Francisco with Mr. Darcy

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this to my Tumblr about two hours before Gigi started tweeting, so it's not really canon-compliant with the pictures she tweeted. Specifically re: outfits. More specifically re: glasses and scarves: there are none here. I don't mind very much, but you might.
> 
> This was written as the accompaniment to an 8tracks mix of "songs that feel like falling in love on cablecars," though actually in the end it kind of got away from me and you don’t need to read the scenes to appreciate the mix or vice versa though it might explain some choices.
> 
> The mix can be found here: http://8tracks.com/johannaisaviking/the-hills-in-this-city-songs-for-touring-san-francisco-with-mr-darcy
> 
> Enjoy!

**one. paris – kate nash**

Lizzie sets the alarm for what she calls “too early” but is nonetheless woken by Gigi’s call, which is somehow earlier: a sudden burst of blue light and her too-loud ringtone (“I hopped off the plane at LAX with a dream and my cardigaaaan.”) shredding the still pre-dawn dark in her room and startling her out of the familiar pigeon nightmare.

“Hi! Feeling adventure-ready?”  
Lizzie groans.  _Of course_  Gigi Darcy is a Morning Person. “Is anyone ‘adventure ready’ at—” she glances at the clock “—six in the morning, Gigi?”  
“Of course. Me, for one. And William for two. And you, soon. That will be three. We’ll be outside your house in twenty minutes. Don’t worry about bringing anything but yourself and your delightful company. And I guess make sure you put on pants.” This elicits another groan. “Great. See you soon!”

Lizzie lays in bed for a second longer, letting her eyes adjust until she can tell that the sky outside is not actually black but more a very, very dark purple-blue. She wonders: is there a word for the morning counterpart to dusk? Do you still just say “dusk”? She wonders: do I have time to take a shower? Is wet hair or greasy hair preferable for mystery adventures undertaken in the pre-dusk? Morning-dusk? Morn-dusk? She wonders: will Charlotte wake up if I call her?

A few seconds later, a text:  
“or maybe a dress? that white one with the flowers is nice. ;) - gg”

Lizzie wears jeans, but she does find time for a shower. When the low, black car pulls up, she is sitting on the house’s front steps, trying to pull her knitted blue beanie (a handmade care-package present from Jane: “Watch out for those bay breezes!”) further down over her still-damp hair.

She jumps up and practically runs toward the car: it’s cold outside. At least, this is what she says to herself. It’s definitely not that she’s excited about being kidnapped. (“ _It’s not kidnapping if you agree to it in advance, Lizzie_ ,” says Charlotte’s voice in her head.  _Shut up, Charlotte_.) The passenger door opens and there is Darcy, unfolding himself from the low seat to stand up. And further up. Really far up.

_(“Tall,” Jane said. “Darcy is tall.”)_

“Good morning, Lizzie,” he says, smiling in a way that might be called “tired” though she is not yet an expert on the Many Moods of William Darcy. She hasn’t seen him since posting Thursday’s video, though he did send her an e-mail late that night. (“ _It’s fine. It was her choice, thank you for listening to her. See you Saturday_.”)

She’s pleased to see he doesn’t look murderous or, for that matter, much more awake than she feels. “Coffee?” He indicates a cardboard carrier in his hand where there is a grande-sized Starbucks cup marked “Lizzie”.

“I thought you’d never ask.” Her fingers brush his for one warm instant as she takes it. (The  _coffee_  is warm. The coffee. It is the coffee with which Lizzie is having a Moment. It is the coffee that Lizzie is so glad to see that she feels a slight catch in her gut and a tingling in her toes. Or maybe that’s her feet going numb in the cold? Hard to tell this early with so much cold fog rolling along the ground.)

“Lizzie Bennet your hair is wet you must be freezing!” Gigi is leaning over the gearshift, her own coffee in one hand though she doesn’t look especially like someone who needs it. Definitely a Morning Person. “Didn’t you have time to dry it? Get in the car before your ears fall off, you doof.”

Lizzie moves to go to the back but Darcy stops her with a hand on her back. ( _Warm_.  _Tall_.)

“The, uh, heaters are in front,” he says.  
“Oh,” she glances at the back seat, which doesn’t look like it has nearly enough leg room for him, “but won’t you be uncom—”

He raises his eyebrows. “Lizzie, you’re shivering. Take the front seat.”

He waits until she’s seated and then closes the door behind her.

Lizzie turns to Gigi as they pull away. “Is this your car?”  
“Nope.”

In the backseat, Darcy sighs.

**two. when you’re traveling at the speed of light - these united states**

Lizzie’s eyes light up when she sees the sea lions.

 Darcy knows this because he is watching them. ( _Her eyes, not the sea lions_.) (And yes, he thinks of himself as “Darcy”. Some people are born with names; others have names thrust upon them.)

 “I  _know_  you can’t have taken me to the pier at dawn to see the sunrise because the sun rises in the  _east,_ I hope you know,  _Gigi_ ,” Lizzie is saying as they walk onto Pier 39.

“Duh, of course I know that. It’s not like I haven’t seen Beauty and the Beast five-hundred times.”  
“Only five-hundred?” says Darcy.  
Gigi rolls her eyes and bumps his shoulder affectionately. “Shush, you.” Then,  _soto voce_ to Lizzie: “He’s just annoyed because he understood that reference.”

Lizzie’s mouth twitches at the corner and she looks like she’s about to say something but then the smile fades and she slows, almost stopping in the path. “What’s that noise?” she says.

Gigi doesn’t say anything, just inclines her head toward the bay, where the last of a heavy but low morning fog is rolling off the water to gather around their ankles. There’s the sound of waves against the dock and against the boats and rafts tied nearby but also, under that and getting louder:

“Seals?!”

“Well—” Gigi starts, but too late. Lizzie is off like a shot. Bang! “Go!” Gigi hisses, pushing her brother forward before he can think about it.

He goes.

One wouldn’t think it would be hard for Darcy to keep up with someone who stands easily a head shorter than him, but he also knows by now not to underestimate Lizzie Bennet in anything. She moves like an engine, or like someone with a personal vendetta against her own legs for being short, taking two steps for every one of his but still somehow managing to keep ahead of him, her legs swirling the fog around her like the wake behind a boat.

It occurs to him that this is ridiculous: that it is foggy and he is chasing Lizzie Bennet chasing sea lions and that it’s so early and so quiet and there’s almost no one on the pier so as soon as Gigi is a little ways behind him it’s like she’s not there at all.

It doesn’t stop him, but it does occur to him.

He manages to catch up with her right as she gets to the water’s edge and he sees her face in the moment when the new sun hits it, when the fog clears for a second and what was a lot of foggy, vaguely oblong, gray shapes organizes itself into:

“Seals!”  
“Sea lions, actually,” he says.

And here’s the thing about Lizzie’s eyes: they’re so much more than just “fine”. They’re bright. They’re open. They’re  _Lizzie_. Angry or hurt or bursting with joy: looking at Lizzie Bennet’s eyes is looking directly into the heart of Lizzie herself. To say that they light up and that he sees it is to say that  _Lizzie_ lights up. And he sees it. When she turns to him she is sparkling, radiant, flushed in the chill,  _beaming with this new discovery. Beaming at him._

As usual, it makes him feel like a hot air balloon.

“So many! In the middle of the city! How cool is that!?” She throws her arms out toward the small city of sea lions teeming over the rafts of K Dock, all sleeping or swimming or shouting their incoherent morning greetings, all slick and shiny wet brown-black in the low light.

He considers this. It is “cool”, though he’s not sure that if he were planning this trip without Gigi he would have brought Lizzie to see it first thing in the morning like this. In fact, he is sure he would  _not_ have thought of it. And would it have been better to miss this?

Maybe the smell, yes, though Lizzie doesn’t seem to mind.

One of the nearer sea lions jumps onto an already over-full raft, causing a noisy, smelly, splashy avalanche as his neighbors are forced into the water one after the other like a confused, panicky domino line.

 Lizzie gasps and glances at him, her eyes screaming “Did you see that!? Please tell me you saw that.” and then she’s laughing so hard she’s bent over with her hands on her knees.

 No, it would not have been better to miss this. Thank God for little sisters.

**three. flowers in your hair – the lumineers**

Right outside the entrance to Coit Tower there is a bush weighed down with big, improbably-out-of-season yellow flowers. Lizzie doesn’t realize that Gigi has broken one off until she feels a nimble hand slipping the stalk into her ponytail.

“Shush, you,” Gigi says, before Lizzie can object. “Your hair’s all dry and pretty now. You can afford some whimsy.”  
“I’m a redhead, Gigi, I can’t  _do_  yellow,” Lizzie’s hand moves to remove the flower but Gigi deftly grabs it and turns the motion into a ballroom twirl. “ _Or whismy_ ,” Lizzie adds.  
“Leave it. It looks great. William tell her the flower looks great.”  
“I’m afraid I can’t be trusted on the subject,” he says. Lizzie lifts her eyes tentatively to his face. His mouth is set in a flat line exactly like the flat-line-mouth of a person trying very hard not to smile. She’s sure her stomach flips for a completely unrelated reason. “I know little to nothing about gardening.”

At the tower’s top, Lizzie leans on one of the stout, arched windows and looks out on a skyline she doesn’t know at all. “You know,” she says. “I never thought of San Francisco as a city you’d want to see from above.”

“Not many people do,” Gigi says, on her left. “But this part of the tour is actually mostly for William. He likes to see the beginning and ending of things before he digs into the middle.” At Lizzie’s questioning eyebrow quirk: “That is: we were down low by the bay and now we’re up high.”

“I like symmetry, you mean to say.” Darcy says, appearing very close on Lizzie’s right. “And also take a healthy interest in the  _architecture and history_  of the city in which I have lived most of my life. If it was as simple as ‘going up high’ we could have gone to the top of the Pemberley building.”

“Yes! Where there is a smoothie bar!” Gigi says, indicating with an expressive gesture as she walks away from them that buildings with rooftop smoothie bars are so much preferable to buildings without that it is a wonder to her anyone would ever choose to go up high for any reason but to drink fruity blended drinks.

“Can we  _see_  Pemberley from here?” Lizzie asks, after a second of only-slightly-awkward silence.  
“A little., but you have to know exactly where to look,” he says. “Do you see that medium-tall, reddish building over to your left?”  
“The one by the pyramid?”

“No, the one closer to us  _here_.” He leans over to point across her with his right arm and for a second she forgets she’s supposed to be looking where he’s pointing while her head fixates on the weight of his shoulder resting slightly on hers.

(The phrase “charming shoulders” floats up unbidden and unwelcome. She shuts it down.)

“Do you see it?” he says.

“Um…” She shakes herself and follows his finger. “Yup,” she squeaks, “I think so.”

**four. married life - michael giacchino**

Walking down Telegraph Hill afterward, Darcy continues pointing out buildings.

“The big pointy one is the Transamerica Pyramid, built in 1972. Third tallest in California.”  
“And first ugliest,” Gigi interjects. She’s got Lizzie on her left arm and her brother on her right so that they are descending the hill’s four-hundred steps like a cartoon of classy Europeans. Lizzie is not sure how they ended up walking this way but it is not unpleasant if a little awkward on the shallow steps.  
“The copper-y one over  _there_ is 555 California Street, known locally as ‘Triple Nickel’, and—”  
“ _William_ ,” Gigi sighs. “Stop showing off. Everyone knows you can list off the entire skyline and draw it from memory.” She’s teasing, but he looks cowed, nonetheless.  
Lizzie’s mouth is open before she can think: “No, keep going,” she says. They both look at her. “I… I don’t know nearly enough about architecture but I always like listening to people talk about things they’re passionate about. Keep going.”

He smiles dryly. “Okay. I propose a trade, then. I’ll teach you about San Francisco architecture now and you can give a seminar on Tolstoy while we’re at lunch.”

She laughs. It’s getting easier and easier to do that around him. “Deal. And Gigi can—” But she doesn’t finish whatever she is going to say because at that moment something green flies over their heads.

And then another something. And another.

“ _What. Is. That_?” she half-whispers as a flock of about fifty green parrots flies over their heads.  
“Oh, did I not mention the Telegraph Hill parrots?” Gigi says. “They’re…um… wild here. If we’re lucky one of them might land on us.”  
“Ha,” Lizzie laughs (easy to do around Darcy and hard to do around birds; how did that happen?) She is frozen to the spot as a war between the urge to run away and the urge to not  _be seen_  running away plays out on her wide-open face. “Ha ha ha, yes, that would be so lucky. Yup. Definitely would want a picture of that one.” Another parrot flies over, this time very low and close. Running away wins. “Ha ha, you know, I’m just going to, um, walk very quickly downhill now seeyouguysinaflash.” She manages to not throw her hands over her head until she’s around the next corner, but only just.

Darcy turns to Gigi with a Look so pronounced it comes pre-capitalized. “ _Gigi_.”

“Yes?” Gigi does a not-very-good impression of not knowing what he means.

“You know perfectly well that Lizzie is ornithophobic.”

“Hmm? Oh, right, she’s afraid of birds. She did talk about a terrifying giant duck in one of the Q and As, didn’t she?” He doesn’t stop the Look. “I kind of thought you might run after her again.”

He’s quiet for a second as they move off after the aforementioned ornithophobe. Without discussing it they have both agreed to move slowly and give Lizzie time to pretend that what just happened did not. (In any case it’s not like they could lose her on a staircase.)

The very last parrot of the flock flies by, taking a moment to fly in a slow circle above their heads before it goes after the others.  He watches it dip for a second and then rise on improbably green wings over the tree-line and disappear again. Then, quietly: “You have got to stop rewatching.”  
“You first.”

**five. hotel song - regina spektor**

For lunch they go to a hotel restaurant with white tablecloths and white china plates with little blue fish painted around the edges. There are no prices on the menu.

“Oh, come on. You can choose where we go for dinner,” Gigi says, when Lizzie protests. “You can even pay if you want. I won’t say a word.” Lizzie doesn’t look convinced. “Neither will William. Your treat for dinner.”

Gigi ignores her brother’s glare. She knows perfectly well he’d never let a guest pay but they can have that argument at dinner and right now she is dying to get Lizzie to try the lobster soup.

“I’m wearing jeans, Gigi,” Lizzie says.

“So? Our mom used to take me here on the way back from swim meets to get sweet potato fries.” (If there’s a slight hiccup in the conversational flow on the mention of ‘swim meets’,if Darcy sits a little straighter and Lizzie is suddenly very interested in her glass of water, Gigi plows through it with the determination of a speeding train. That was Thursday, she is saying. This is Saturday.) “Trust me, the waiters are all just relieved I don’t smell like chlorine, today.”

“But—”

Gigi throws up a hand. “This is my favorite restaurant and we want to show you it.  _Relax_.”

On cue, a waiter appears with an enormous plate piled high with thin-cut, crispy orange fries. “Compliments of the chef,” he says, as he lays it on the table. “Welcome back, Miss Darcy.”

She thanks him. To Lizzie: “See: they like you already.”

“That had nothing to do with me,” Lizzie says.

Darcy sighs. If this conversation goes on any longer he’s going to have to go get the newsie hat out of the car just to distract them. “They like all of us,” he says. “You’re part of the table, Lizzie.”

She considers this, then, smiling slightly: “In that case, I am going to declare Fry Law and request you give me one of those stupidly small plates next to the butter, please, Mr. Darcy.”

“‘Fry…Law,’” he says.

“Fry Law: All Fries At the Table Belong to All People At the Table,” she says in her best Stuffy-Bore-Reading-A-Royal-Proclamation Voice. It sounds an awful lot like her Catherine de Bourgh Voice. “Lydia invented it when we were kids,” she explains as she takes the offered plate. Her face darkens. For a second she forgot that she is not talking to or about Lydia. “It’s… um… It’s silly.”

“It’s logical,” he says. “In  _theory_ : if everyone agrees to it and orders french fries equally often then the net-fries-consumed and net-fries-bought over the course of your life should even out.”

“In theory, yes,” Lizzie says. “But Lydia never orders her own fries anymore because of it and Jane still makes me do it every time we go out because it’s ‘nice’. Plus no one ever announces Fry Law unless they want to steal someone else’s. How is that fair?”

Gigi is contemplative as she takes a plate, as well. “I think William and I have been doing that my whole life without knowing it.”

“ _You’ve_ been doing it,” he says. “ _I_ always order exactly what I want.”

She pouts.“But you’re so much better at ordering than me.”

He turns to Lizzie and before they know they are doing it they are sharing a look that says more than any words could about little sisters and lifetimes of stolen French fries.

“Welcome to my world,” she says.

“Trust me,” he says, as she looks away and he forces himself to turn back to the menu. “You don’t need to welcome me. I’ve been here.”

**six. everywhere you look - wakefield**

“Smile, this one’s for Twitter!”   
“Another? Aren’t your followers going to be sick of me?”

Gigi looks up from her phone to make a face. “Lizzie, what little internet fame I have is from being on your vlog. My followers are  _your_ followers. Are they sick of  _you_?”

Lizzie must concede this point. “Amazingly: no.”

“Right. Now smile pretty.” Lizzie does, gesturing behind her with one arm at the neat row of pastel-painted Victorian houses and the famous Alamo Square view of the skyline behind her.

“Great,” Gigi says, and then dives back into her phone to report it to the faceless, tweeting masses.  
“Hey wait,” Lizzie says, pulling out her own phone, but Gigi either doesn’t hear or pretends not to.

“Would you like a photo for yourself?” Darcy says. He’s been standing with his hands in his pockets off to the side, contemplating the skyline, but now he takes a step toward her, hand outstretched. “Allow me.”  
“It’s for Charlotte, actually.”  
“Of course,” he says. He takes the phone and steps back a bit as she strikes the same pose as before, only now when she looks up at the camera it strikes her that taking a photo requires staring directly at each other. She wonders what he’s seeing on the screen. (He’s got his chin tucked uncomfortably back toward his neck but that may just be to look down at the phone’s small screen.)

“Done,” he says, and as soon as he can look away from her he softens again. She takes the phone back with a quiet “Thank you” and sends the photo out to Charlotte and Jane with the caption “Guess where I am!”

When she’s got the phone back in her pocket he clears his throat. “You know Alice Walker used to live in one of the Painted Ladies,” he says.

“Really?” she says. Darcy’s habit of relying on pseudo-intellectual trivia to fill conversational lulls used to grate on her but she must admit it is making him sort of an ideal tour guide.

He indicates one toward the end of the row. “That one.”

“Wow.”

“And our aunt used to live in one when we were kids, too,” Gigi says, coming up between them again. “But William wouldn’t brag about that.”

Lizzie eyes widen. “You’ve been _inside_  one? Jesus, do you also have an uncle named Jesse played by John Stamos?”

 “Who?” he says.

Lizzie groans. “William Darcy did you not watch Full House as a kid? No, wait, of course you didn’t! This explains everything!”

Gigi bumps him with her shoulder, slipping one arm through his as they start back to the car. “Oh, don’t worry, he did. We used to watch it with our dad when mom was having a night at the office. If she was around we weren’t allowed to watch TV,” she clarifies. “But he’s pretending he doesn’t know what we’re talking about because he’s afraid I’m going to sing the theme song at him.”

“You do have a history with this park,” he mutters. And that is _definitely_  a chin tuck. Ever since Gigi pointed it out to her, Lizzie has had the distinct impression that this is the Darcy equivalent of pulling your hood over your face. If Darcy were the sort of person who wore or even owned hoodies.

Gigi is watching him expectantly and he is studiously not looking at her at all. She opens her mouth like she’s going to sigh and then: “ _Aaaah-aaaah-aaaah-aaaaaaaah._ ”

It’s so subtle she  _could_  almost just be sighing it a way that just happens to be a bit musical. Almost.

His chin is trying to make a long-term personal relationship with his neck.

And again: “ _Aaaah-aaaah-aaaah-aaaaaaaah”._

“They don’t even live in this neighborhood that’s just the opening credits!” he snaps.

She’s outright singing now: “ _Aaaah-aaaah-aaaah-aaaaaaaah!_ ”

“They live on Girard Street, Gigi!”

Lizzie’s laugh is half surprise, half delight. “Oh my god, I… I can’t believe you know that.”

“I was a child once, Lizzie, and as Gigi would say: I am a ‘crazy nerd’ about San Francisco trivia,” he says, and then, leaning conspiratorially over Gigi’s head as if she won’t hear: “But please now no more singing. If we let her get to the bass line people will stare.”

Lizzie gives him a thumbs-up that his Aunt Catherine would absolutely  _not_  approve of. “You got it, dude.”

(As they’re getting into the car, Charlotte finally responds to the text: “who took this picture? you look like you’re staring down a gun instead of a camera.”

Lizzie says nothing.)

**seven.** **all is love - karen o & the kids**

Lizzie feels her stomach catch as the cable car lurches and starts up the hill.

Charlotte and she did this on the day they moved her in, but there was no space to stand on the outside runner board at that time and so now, clutching a pole as the car angles and starts up the California line, she feels for the first time just how fully the position exposes her to the street and all those unforgiving hills (which could be so particularly unforgiving to, for example, girls who fall off moving cable cars).

It’s a good sort of exposure, though, and, as she said when she made Gigi and Darcy stand here with her: what is the point of doing something that could be exciting if you aren’t going to do it in the scariest and most exciting way possible?

“That’s a very Gryffindor thought, Lizzie Bennet,” Gigi said. Lizzie conceded that she likes to think so, yes.

And so they are moving up.

“Smile Lizzie!” Gigi says. Lizzie turns away from the road to the phone in her face.

“Twitter  _again_?”

“No, this one’s just for me.” Lizzie rolls her eyes but smiles big. The wind is whipping her hair across her face and she uses her free hand to push it back, noticing, as she does, Darcy behind Gigi. Again.

She’s been trying not to notice him, partly out of habit and partly because he’s put on the Newsie hat. Apparently he had it in the car. This is not a comfort.

He glances at her and must see the look on her face because he glances away again immediately with a small, self-congratulating Darcy smile that could have fueled a whole angry vlog last summer. Now it just makes her blush.

_When did that happen?_

It has been a long time, now, since Lizzie has thought of Darcy with anything like the contempt of last summer. A long time since she has thought of some of her earlier vlogs with anything but embarrassment.

She was nervous about running into him at Pemberley because she expected he would hate her, but now he is taking her around the city with his sister. They are all riding a cable car together and he’s learned to make fun of himself. When did that happen? And  _why_?

It can’t possibly be all just a show, she can’t imagine him making the effort after the way she so publicly and completely eviscerated him for a hundred thousand viewers (and counting.) That he should even allow her presence at his company is baffling, but then to add on top of it this self-deprecating, endearingly awkward, polite person who looks at his little sister (his charming, surprising sister) like she is made of well-meaning gold? It’s too much.

Has he always been this way and she’s just not seen it? Lizzie thinks back. Jane has certainly always seen him more favorably, but then almost everyone has seen him more favorably than Lizzie. (She kicks  _that_  thought aside, too embarrassing.)

But then: she  _was_  only “decent enough.”

And, even worse, his “better judgment” that had made her so undesirable.

No: even if she exaggerated his pride it was definitely  _there_. Even  _Jane_ , the Sweetest Person on the Planet, had called him ‘prickly’.

This Darcy is new.

New Year, New Darcy? Maybe.

Part of her, the part that sits in her head and preens, sometimes, about her subscriber count the size of a small city, realizes this  _must_  be for her and feels the flattery of it, but a larger part knows it isn’t possible, it’s too much change, and this other part chides the first for being so vain.

That he can still be civil to her and want her around is evident, inarguable; but to attribute it to his still loving her? Unfathomable.

(If, as she has pointed out to Charlotte before, what he was doing before  _was “_ loving” her at all and not some weird and embarrassing delusion brought on by small-town cabin fever and sexual frustration.)

(And yet.)

“Here,” she says, to focus her wandering mind, “give me the phone. I’ll take one of you two.”

“Ooooh, no,” Gigi says. “Take one with your phone  _and then_ _tweet it_. People won’t believe me that you’re alive and with us if it’s only me saying so.”

“ _Seriously,_ Gigi _,_  if you are so worried about my viewers just start your own vlog already,” Lizzie says, but does pull her own phone from her pocket.

Gigi shrugs. “Maybe I will. Now take the picture. No, wait.” She reaches back and snatches the hat off of Darcy’s head. He lets her. “Okay, ready.”

This is what’s in the photo: Gigi has the hat on her head held down with one hand so that it doesn’t blow off. Her hair is across in her face in the wind but she is none-the-less trying to make a playful face at the camera, her eyebrows raised and her mouth wide and smiling like she’s caught mid-laughter. Darcy is not even facing the camera, though it’s not clear what he _is_  looking at, either. But he is smiling. Not smirking or pursing his lips like he’s trying not to laugh: just smiling, in general, at something off to his right.

New Lizzie must admit that New Darcy has a really nice profile. (And Old Darcy probably did, too, but he never contorted his face to smile.)

**eight. if you’re not scared - k’s choice**

Lizzie makes the decision as they are standing on the Golden Gate Bridge.

“I know it’s silly but when I was a kid I always wondered why it’s not actually gold,” she says.

 “There’s an urban legend about that, actually,” Darcy responds, “that says the paint they use  _is_  gold and the salt in the fog turns it red. But as with most urban legends, it’s more interesting than true.” They’re all standing in a line against the east guard rail, Gigi on the left and Darcy on the right with Lizzie in the center looking down at the bay with her hands on the red railing. “Actually, Joseph Strauss always wanted the bridge to be red because it’s so dramatic with the blue of the bay and this was so completely his project it is hard to believe there was ever any other color considered.” When he looks at her and realizes this was probably too much information for a response to her lighthearted anecdote, he admits that Caroline got him a book on Strauss two Christmases ago.

 “Ah.” Lizzie nods. “Not cufflinks? That doesn’t really sound like a Caroline present.”  
“She gets us all books every Christmas,” Gigi explains. “Mine is always something from Oprah’s Book Club.”

Darcy shrugs. “I liked the Strauss book. He was an interesting figure.”

Lizzie smiles at ‘figure.’ Why not ‘person’ or some other less formal word that real humans use when talking with their real human friends? “He sounds intense.”

“According to urban legend, yes,” he concedes. “The bridge consumed his life. He didn’t really have anything else aside from a handful of terrible personal relationships and some highly questionable poems.”

She frowns thoughtfully then sort of shrugs with her whole face. “At least he had the bridge?”

“At least he had the bridge. Most experts thought it couldn’t be built because the tides in the bay are too powerful and the water is too deep—”

“How deep?” she says, just to see if he knows.

“Three-hundred-and-seventy-two feet—” He barely breaks his Tour Guide Voice “—and they thought that the fogs and winds would stop construction from taking place. I don’t know if ‘intense’ is the word so much as ‘insane’.”

“ _I_  think he sounds like a dreamer,” Lizzie says.

The response is out of his mouth before he can consider it: “Of course you do, you have a Kiley Cyrus song set as your ringtone.”

She rolls her eyes. “One: it’s Miley. Two: I know you know that and messed it up on purpose. And three: Lydia set it!”

“And you kept it.”

She doesn’t want to get into the complicated emotional dynamics of how difficult it would be for her to actually sit down and change the ringtone Lydia set for her as a joke around Christmas time so, instead, she says: “That song is a delight and I am not afraid to admit it.  _Why do you hate happiness so much_?”

It’s the sort of thing she would have said to him last summer, only now when he meets her eyes he sees she’s laughing. At him; with him; does it matter? (It feels like “with him”, though, which matters a little.)

She holds his gaze. At this distance the height difference is more evident than ever.

Her brain says that this is so unfair, this height difference, because he will always have the gravity of his physical size to lend weight to any dumb opinions he has (and regardless of whether or not she hates him anymore or if they’re friends now or anything else: she is certain that he will have dumb opinions that she will disagree with as long as he is alive to have dumb opinions and she is alive to disagree with them) while she will have to turn her shortness into adjectives like “spunky” and “feisty” by being over-loud. He’ll be a mountain while she’s a firecracker.

Her gut says that his height is unfair because he is too tall to kiss easily _._

She blushes and has to look away over his shoulder, to where Gigi has wandered off down the bridge.

It’s not the first time she’s thought it, but it is the first time she’s thought it without a camera turned on them and the buffer of 100,000 viewers.

“We should catch up with your sister,” she says, quickly.

He turns to where she is looking and she can tell from his face that he hadn’t noticed Gigi walking away, either. He nods and then, after considering a second, it happens. He offers his arm.

“Shall we?” he says, quirking one eyebrow just the way he had when he’d warned her about the city’s unforgiving hills.

It’s dorky and awkward and silly but the stiff way he does it also manages to convey that he  _knows_ it’s dorky and awkward and silly and that makes it kind of great.

It is a perfect moment and it could go one of two ways: she chooses the third, which is to pretend she doesn’t know it’s happening. To not analyze it or think about what she’ll tell Jane or how smug Charlotte will sound on the phone. To not worry about what Gigi will put on Twitter.

She takes the offered arm.

And why not? They’re basically friends now. Friends can walk arm-in-arm. Lizzie would walk arm-in-arm with Fitz if he was here. Caroline would certainly walk arm in arm with Darcy if she was here.

She’s going with it. Whatever “it” is.

If it gets too weird she can always throw herself off the bridge.

**nine. almost like being in love - nat king cole**

It is obvious that something has changed.

And it’s not even that they willingly walked arm-in-arm down the Golden Gate Bridge looking like a postcard of Idiots in Love (Gigi saw that! She did! She could not even contain her feelings about it enough into words to text Fitz or take a picture before they broke apart again but she  _saw! It_!)

And it’s not that they can’t stop looking at each other. That’s not new, either. Gigi has seen the vlogs.

It’s that when Lizzie looks at him now she is looking at him more often than not through her eyelashes, furtively, while pretending to do something else, that when he sees she’s looking, too, he glances away, curling his fingers around the cuffs of his sleeves, like he’s unsure what to do with his hands or what he’s ever done with his hands or if he’s ever had hands before today.

In Golden Gate Park as the sun is setting, he says something dumb and she laughs and smiles and he looks like he literally cannot breathe for a second. When she responds by bumping his shoulder with hers, he looks surprised and delighted and then ( _good boy_ ) bumps hers back. When she rolls her eyes and looks away again, he smiles like he’s swallowed the sun.

It is, frankly, almost a little uncomfortable to watch her brother this happy. Gigi considers that maybe this is the moment to leave them, but, then, she knows that suggesting that she get a taxi home will somehow break the spell, that Lizzie would be reminded of what she is doing and who she is with and she would start doubting again and there would be a misunderstanding somewhere and she would insist she get in the taxi, too, and

Well.

It is just better for Gigi to stay. They need a third person there so that they can carry on like giant, furtive dumbos without the uncomfortable danger of doing anything they wouldn’t want a third person to see. They need a chaperone.  _Or a camera_ , Gigi thinks.

So she stays. And chaperones. And tweets.

It is the least she can do for her infuriating, idiot brother and his new buddy.

**ten. san franciscan nights - eric burdon & the animals**

They move through the dusky China Town streets to the soundtrack of an old man in a Giants hat and sunglasses playing  pop-music covers on an erhu. The spicy smell of incense blows out of doorways on waves of inviting heat and mixes in the air with the steam from street-vendors selling fresh-folded dumplings in hand-sized paper packages. They stop at the fruit stands lit by strings of yellow and red paper lanterns and examine wintermelon and frozen fish balls. (“You can actually make a really good soup with fish balls,” Lizzie offers, irrationally pleased at knowing something they don’t. Gigi is incredulous.)

“Hey, look,” Lizzie says, skipping over to a dollar-bin on the street outside a pawn shop. She reaches in and comes out with a handful of finger traps. “Remember these?” She slips a blue one onto her right index finger and points it at Gigi. “Think you can get out before me?”

“I know I can,” Gigi says, “but I’m not going to.” If Darcy were not so used to being manhandled by his sister or if he were not so distracted by the way Lizzie’s eyes shine when she’s trying to play serious, it would not be so easy for Gigi to reach behind her, grab his wrist, and slip the open end of the trap onto his finger.

But he is and it is and she does.

And then she skips away again.

“Okay,” Lizzie says. “I see my fearsome finger-trap skills have scared your sister away. Do you have the courage to face me?”

“Probably not,” he admits, honestly. In a game where one must relax to win he knows he probably couldn’t even win a ribbon for participation when she is standing so close and their fingertips are so very nearly touching.

“Ok,” she says. “On three. 3…2… 1.”

She pushes in and wiggles out and has her finger free almost immediately, waggling it in front of his nose in victory.

Somehow he is still struggling with his end a few seconds later.

“How is that even possible?” she says, as he continues to pull at it. “You shouldn’t be able to get stuck with only one finger in, that’s not how it works.”

“As you say,” he says, through gritted teeth.

“Put your other finger in and try to get them both out at the same time.”

He does. It doesn’t help.

She lays her hands on his wrists to stop him pulling: “No, look, you have to relax.”

He looks up at her in a way that implies very clearly that that is never going to happen while her hands are on his wrists. She snatches them back.

In the end she, blushing, hands the vendor a dollar and they are forced to walk away with it.

“William Darcy: Forbes’ number thirty-six Top CEO Under Thirty,” she crows as they walk after Gigi. “Skis black diamond hills, SCUBA dives with sharks,  _cannot get his fingers out of a Chinese finger trap_.”

He frowns. “I don’t think I ever told you about the Forbes list.”

She might blush at this, but it feels like they’re past pretending, now. At least where the internet is concerned. So instead she rolls her eyes. “Oh, like you haven’t googled me.”

When they catch up with Gigi she forces him to pose for Twitter before she helps him get his fingers out.

**eleven. pictures of people taking pictures - jack johnson**

Lizzie picks a tiny noodle shop for dinner. It’s up a thin flight of stairs above a video rental store and a man on the street waves them in with promises of “the best pho in the world.” Lizzie is also intrigued by the poster outside, which advertises avocado milkshakes.

They sit somewhat comfortably in a corner booth against a fish tank, Lizzie and Darcy on one side and Gigi on the other.

(“I hate booths. William loves booths.  _Sit in the booth, Lizzie_.”)

“All right,” Lizzie says, when they’ve been served and she is squeezing half a lime over her noodles. “The important question  now, and don’t answer unless you’re really sure about what you’re saying: is this  _really_  the best pho in the world?”

Gigi stirs hers thoughtfully. “It’s beef broth with noodles that you add things to. Is there really much variation in quality?”

Lizzie nods. “I see your point, and it is taken. I  _have_  never had a bad pho. But the man outside said ‘best in the world’. Now, Darcy: ‘best in the world’?”

“I don’t know that I’ve eaten enough pho in my life to make an objective assessment,” he says, after a second.

Lizzie dismisses this with a wave of her hand. “Point seen and thrown out as ridiculous. Objective best doesn’t exist.”

He pauses with his spoon between the bowl and his mouth. “ What? Of course it does.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she says. “There’s no one anywhere who could possibly eat and judge all the pho in the world and, in any case, their opinion wouldn’t be objective because they would be a  _person_  and thus subjective based on their life experience (even if that life experience in this case would be that they spend literally all of their time travelling and eating pho). It’s not possible for there to be an objective best in this case since there is no person who could have the experience to judge it, so the question is: is it the best in _your_  world?”

“But you could say that’s true of anything,” he says. “If that’s true of pho then how can anyone have the authority to judge anything as the ‘best’?”

“Yes, that is what I said,” she says, and repeats: “ _Objective best does not exist._ ”

“No, there has to be an objective standard,” he says. “Otherwise how can we possibly discuss and compare anything, even things that aren’t beef soup? Surely you must concede that there are some people who have  _more_  right than others to judge what is ‘best’? A food critic who specializes in Vietnamese food, for example.”

She shakes her head. “But their idea of what a pho is supposed to be might be so different from  mine. Maybe they grew up in Vietnam and used to get it when they were a kid from a certain street vendor who always put in lime and now to them pho isn’t pho unless it has lime in it? And if I first had pho at a place that didn’t even give me lime and I think it’s supposed to have chili pepper in it or something, when I go to where this critic said to go to get the best pho it might be amazing but I’d be getting  _their_  best idea of what pho is supposed to be. Even the best critics always admit some personal bias in their reviews.”

“But you did just say the ‘best’ critics,” he says. “Who decides that?”

She groans. “Me! Just now! Based on what I like in criticism! Which is that I like critics who admit subjectivity!” She meets his eyes and bites down on a bit of steak she’s trapped deftly between her chopsticks.

“Okay,” he says. “But on the other hand, everyone would probably agree that a restaurant that gives you better cuts of steak in the soup and more options of items to mix in is better than one that does not.”

She shrugs. “Maybe I like gristle and hate beansprouts. And better doesn’t mean ‘best’.”

“But if there’s a limited amount of pho in the world and you can rank them all as better or worse then logically somewhere along the line in one direction there must be the one that is the best.”

“And where are you proposing we line up these bowls of pho? Is your condo that big?”

He smiles. “Now I know you’ve lost because you’re trying to back up your argument with statements that you know are ridiculous.”

“I have said nothing that is ridiculous. We can start lining them up now by tasting each other’s and then we can go next door and  buy up all of their soup, too…” She looks thoughtful. “Actually, on second thought, maybe we should call out for delivery from the condo and have the delivery men line them up as they come.”

“That does sound more practical, yes.”

“I thought so.”

 _Click!_  They both look away from  each other and at Gigi, who is trying to quickly hide her phone.

“What?” she says. “You’ll want to remember this.” Seeing their faces: “ _I mean_  you’ll want to have it to show the crew from Hoarders when they come to ask why the condo is filled floor-to-ceiling with soup. Jeez.”

**twelve. your ex-lover is dead - stars**

After dinner, Gigi invites Lizzie to the condo for drinks.

“We could watch a movie, too, maybe?”

Lizzie purses her lips. She could go ( _wants_  to go, in fact, and could really use a glass of fancy rich-people wine to clear her head after today) but as to the  _movie_  she has strong suspicions that this will be where Gigi feigns sleepiness and makes the not-sneaky exit Lizzie’s been anticipating all day, leaving Lizzie with Darcy.

In the dark.

Watching “The Reader” or some other award-winning movie no real person actually owns, but which is probably someone’s ‘best’.

 _In the dark_.

 _And what would be so bad about that?_ says a voice in her head that Lizzie would love to attribute to Jane or Charlotte but which is, she knows, not anything but pure Lizzie Bennet.

Lizzie Bennet, who always trusts her gut but now finds her gut considering the prospect of a night spent in the dark with William Darcy with something not unlike interest.

Lizzie Bennet, who knows perfectly well where always trusting her gut has got her in the past.

She is beginning to see the dangers of too much time spent with the Darcy family.

One Darcy, anyway.

“Actually, I promised Charlotte we could Skype tonight,” she says.

“Oh, you can do that at the condo!” Gigi takes her arm. Lizzie takes it back.

“Clearly you don’t have a since-fetuses best friend. Charlotte and I never skype for less than two hours.” Gigi looks like she’s about to say something else, but Lizzie cuts her off. “Really, today was great, but I’m exhausted. I need to crawl into my bed and videochat my bestie.”

Gigi looks like she might argue but then she looks from her brother to Lizzie and nods. “Okay. You guys can drop me off in the Tenderloin, then. I have it on good Twitter authority that I know someone who is currently at Big and I, for one, could use a mystery cocktail. You can get Lizzie home, right, William?” Darcy protests that she’ll have no way to get home afterward, then, if he takes the car, but Gigi is having none of it. “Yes, but you’ll have the car and I have  _your_  number, dearest loving-but-over-worried-big-brother-of-mine.”

And so Lizzie ends up alone with Darcy, anyway. In the dark and without even  _The Reader_  to help them avoid conversation.

They say very little the entire drive back to her house except for his asking if she is warm enough and her saying that yes she is thank you, though actually the car is almost uncomfortably hot. They discuss her thesis without actually paying very much attention to what they are saying but that topic can only last so long.

They lapse into total silence as he turns the car onto a street that winds along the bay and she leans her head against the window to avoid looking at his hand and his precise, long fingers on the gearshift. The warmth of her breath fogs the glass and she rubs it off with her cardigan sleeve. (It leaves a smudge that she can’t see but that he will notice tomorrow and studiously avoid reflecting on.)

She watches the red and green lights of boats out on the water and the far-away yellow-white of Alcatraz. He watches the road.

It should be uncomfortable, but it’s not. It is very nearly nice.

“Well,” he says, when the car is stopped and they’ve been sitting in silence a millisecond too long. “Good night, Lizzie.”

“Uh… yeah.” She gathers her bag and coat, pulling Jane’s blue beanie on again. “Thank you…uh…” She seems to be steeling herself. “Thank you,  _William_?” He does what she knows now is a Darcy Laugh: more like a very short, sharp sigh. She blushes and covers her face and laughs like Lizzie: loudly and with her whole body, the way he’s only ever seen her laugh with her sisters or Charlotte. “Ergh, no, never mind, that’s too weird. I’m sticking with Darcy, sorry. I tried.”

“Everyone does,” he says. He isn’t bothered.

“Yeah, thanks for the ride, Darcy. And, um… the whole day. It was really, really great. Thanks for everything. Seriously.”  _Thanks for not hating me, for some reason._

She hopes he knows what she means.

“Of course,” he says. He meets her eyes. He hopes she knows what  _he_  means. “Give my regards to Charlotte.”

“Of course,” she says. “See you Monday. Good night.”

She hears him drive away once she’s in the entry hall, absently checking Twitter from her phone. Gigi’s photo from the restaurant has already been favorited sixty-one times. Sometimes (all the time) having viewers is weird.

Probably because having fans (and Gigi as a friend, let’s be honest) has made Lizzie a little paranoid, she immediately clicks through to see what else Gigi was posting all day.

She is not surprised.

An hour ago:

ggdarcy:  _Some people just won’t be manipulated into watching The Notebook._

FitzOnTheFitz: @ggdarcy  _Bring them to Big it’s Cocktail Mystery Hour. Spoiler: the mystery is tequila._

ggdarcy @FitzOnTheFitz  _Hush. I think if I work this right I could get to see Ryan Gosling tonight._

ggdarcy: @FitzOnTheFitz  _Never mind I’m on my way. Have a cocktail ready I’m basically Emma Wodehouse._

That last has been favorited forty-six times. Lizzie sighs.Can’t a semi-famous vlogger have _anything_  for herself?

**thirteen. i can’t stay - the killers**

At two a.m. and some minutes, Lizzie slips out of bed and shuffles down the hall to the office where she sets up her computer and tripod while she’s at home. She curls up in the cushioned desk chair with her blanket around her shoulders and her legs over one of the armrests, contemplating her reflection (pale, tired, her messy hair piled on top of her head in a loose bun) in the camera’s dark lens. The lighting here is nothing but a small circle around the desk lamp she’s turned on, but it will do for what she wants. She leans over and hits record.

“Hey, Charlotte. Um, I know we don’t  _actually_  do video letters but we didn’t actually get to talk much on Skype earlier, and it’s too late to call you and I can’t sleep so… why not?” She stops, as if giving space for Charlotte to say something, but of course the camera says nothing. Lizzie nods. “Right, video letters mean  _me talking_. Okay. I’m a vlogger that shouldn’t be too hard. Um… oh! Darcy sends his regards. His words. I forgot to tell you but now you know.” More silence. “You know, I’m really wishing we had an established Charlotte costume for Costume Theater right now. I’d roleplay with  _myself_  I am that antsy.”

“Did I tell you I tried to call him William? Clearly a moment of temporary insanity.”

Lizzie yawns.

“I’m so tired. But also wide awake. What is that?”

Silence.

“Ugh, sorry, Char. I thought I had things to say but this is total nonsense. I won’t even send it to you.”

She tilts her head so her neck is against the chair’s back and looks at the ceiling. It’s that ugly cottage-cheese-type material that is so popular in basements an multi-purpose rooms everywhere. She uses one foot to push off against the desk and the chair turns slowly so that the ugly cottage-cheese swirls above her. Absentmindedly: “My name is Lizzie Bennet and I had a really nice day.” She looks back at the camera. In the lens she is small and distorted. Wrapped  in the thick, white blanket she looks like a ghost.

“Ugh, yeah, definitely not sending this, you’d just put it in the vlog.” She smiles at the memory of her earlier videos. “Charlotte! Cut this out! Start the video here!” It’s so easy to slip into her Vlogger Voice. She reaches over the side of the chair and picks up the blue flannel button-up from  where she left it earlier. She shrugs it over her shoulders.

Jane said she couldn’t use the internet as a safety blanket, but it’s so easy to be Costume Lizzie. She straightens, smiles, looks the camera dead on. “My name is Lizzie Bennet, and today I regretted rejecting William Darcy.”

It feels big when she says it, a world-changer, but afterward the room  remains quiet and dark.

“Yeah,” she says, to absolutely no one, as she shrugs the flannel off again. “Definitely not sending this.”

(And if she dresses herself with more than usual care on Monday? Well, she can just tell herself she’s trying to impress the company. It is a place she thinks she would like to belong.)

**BONUS TRACK: fourteen. save me san francisco - train**

_it’s a wild wild beautiful world/but there’s a wide-eyed girl back there/and she means everything everything_

**Author's Note:**

> People who know San Francisco at all will probably realize that I don't. Trust me: I did look at a map to write this and I am aware that their route around town makes sense only in a Ferris-Beuller's-Day-Off kind of way where geography doesn't exist and that even if there was a road that went along the bay from the Tenderloin past Alcatraz it would make no sense for Darcy to take it to get Lizzie home unless she lived on a houseboat. I imagine that maybe he took that route (on the road that doesn't exist) to keep her in the car longer. You can, too.
> 
> Thanks to my Frog for giving me the idea for the mix, which turned into the idea for writing the scenes to go along with it. I would never have finished this if I didn't have someone who was willing to read each scene as I wrote it or listen to my endless whiny Facebook messages about how impossible writing Darcy is, so this is basically a present for Eileen, who did all that and also let me lift almost the entire Fry Law conversation from our real lives. I am sorry I always eat all your fries.


End file.
